Monetizing Free Video works better in the Living Room

November 21st, 2008 Add a Comment »

Well over a year ago I asked a Joost executive why not use some of that money they recently had gotten in funding into going for the living room via Xbox or PS3. I got a politically correct answer about yes, we’ll do it eventually, but that’s not our focus right now.

In the meantime, Hulu was building their platform for the web, and 4 months later it was king of the hill. Joost then had to rethink their distribution and ditched their p2p client for an all Flash streaming based approach, which seems to start picking up traffic but the differences in the audience sizes are ridiculous. A tip for your current approach, and it has to be done a month ago: Allow non-signed users to watch your some of your content (short-clips), and allow for embedding, worked wonders for YouTube, it’d be awesome for all that niche oriented content you have. (Update Nov 22 2008: Joost has just released video embedding!)

But even though Hulu has almost 10 times more traffic now than Joost, it’s earnings are still a joke compared to the advertising earnings of Broadcast and Cable, it’s just peanuts. With Ad Spending going down, it would make sense to me as an advertiser to somehow stay in the living room, with cheaper CPM, and better targeting. Hulu & Joost on the Xbox could do that for me, if only they were available in the living room.

Netflix on the other hand, monetizes month to month, and they also saw the opportunity of getting to your living room in different ways. They’ve tried with their own $100 box, but I find the most interesting and convenient way to get an audience of at least 15 million people that spend hours and hours wasting their time in front of their TV playing video games (with barely any ads) in the Xbox console.
They give me as an Xbox Live customer yet another option to keep my Xbox Live subscription and think twice about getting the PS3 and ditching the Xbox live payments since my Netflix subscription gains added value cause I don’t have to plug my laptop anymore to the tv. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have all those Hulu and Joost shows there too?

Netflix has released their stream service this week via Xbox, and it’s exactly the way I suggested to Joost, make it a free download, negotiate with Microsoft an ad revenue agreement, I can think up so many business models from this partnership… I wish I had super powers.

In any case, pictures speak louder than words some times. I hope bizdevs at Hulu & Joost take a look at this and remotely consider this as a probably great channel for content distribution. This could be your chance to grow your audience several orders of magnite, just become a Microsoft Live developer and port your technology (wish it was as easily done as said, I know), Internet Video needs to compete in the living room, forget about mobile for now, the living room is here now.

See More pictures of my Xbox Live update experience.

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Chris Pirillo reviews MyBloop.com

November 21st, 2008 Add a Comment »

Chris Pirillo has reviewed this week our Infinite Storage service MyBloop.com very positively, and he has called it “The World’s Biggest Hard Drive.

About Chris
Christopher “Chris” Joseph Pirillo (born July 26, 1973(1973-07-26)) is the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome which is a large blogging network. He spent two years hosting the TechTV television program Call for Help before parting ways with the show. He also hosted the first annual Call-for-Help-a-Thon on TechTV. He now hosts videos on several internet sites, including CNN.com, YouTube and his own website.

Chris Pirillo live streams from his home-office using Ustream technology and uses this to create YouTube videos daily with a focus on software, computers, iPhone applications, and other technology-related topics and events.

Chris Pirillo is also an avid blogger, combining his website which contains over 1,500 posts, and updating his micro-blogging accounts, such as Twitter and FriendFeed daily.

Every year, Pirillo hosts Gnomedex, a technology conference tailored to technology and blogging enthusiasts.

About MyBloop.com
MyBloop.com is a free service that allows its users to store an unlimited number of files absolutely for free. It allows for an evolving and incremental set of functionalities depending on the file types, being the more feature rich, music, playlists and picture files. It has social features, search, and several file sharing functionalities such as flash embedding, which makes it attractive to podcasters and musicians looking to host their audio files and get exposure without paying for the storage or the bandwidth.

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Geek T-Shirt Collection #2 - Joost Beta T-Shirt

November 20th, 2008 Add a Comment »

A Joost beta tester T-Shirt.

About Joost
(From Wikipedia)

Joost is a system for distributing recorded TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer TV technology, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa).

Joost began development in 2006. Working under the code name “The Venice Project”, Zennström and Friis assembled teams of some 150 software developers in about six cities around the world, including New York, London, Leiden and Toulouse. According to Zennström at a 25 July 2007 press conference about Skype held in Tallinn, Estonia, Joost had signed up more than a million beta testers, and its launch was scheduled for the end of 2007.

The teams are currently in negotiations with FOX networks. It has signed up with Warner Music, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Productions (Indianapolis 500, IndyCar Series) and production company Endemol for the beta.[2] In February 2007, Viacom entered into a deal with the company to distribute content from its media properties, including MTV Networks, BET and film studio Paramount Pictures.

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Geek T-Shirt Collection #1 - The Ubuntu Upgrade T-Shirt

November 19th, 2008 Add a Comment »

This is the first of a series of picture posts I intend to share with you so you can take a look at the collection of Geek T-Shirts I’ve managed to amass during the last 5 years.

If you are an internet or technology company, feel welcome to send me a t-shirt, If I haven’t done a review of your company/product, I’ll do a review for you in return and I’ll take a picture of myself wearing it.

The Ubuntu Upgrade T-Shirt


Front - “sudo apt-get upgrade”


Back - Ubuntu logo

This T-shirt I made as an homage to Ubuntu and the mantra of easy updates, as well as a mantra of always keeping yourself up to date in life with whatever you do.

Nowadays updating Ubuntu is even easier, but some people like me still might do it old style, updating manually the /etc/apt/sources.list file, and running sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get upgrade dist, the t-shirt reads sudo apt-get upgrade which will basically upgrade those packages on your machine that need to do so.

The T-shirt was made at my favorite T-shirt-making website, (here goes the free ad) SpreadShirt.com

Photographed by Paulina Leon at 5 Points in Long Island City, NY.

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Got a Strands.com T-Shirt

November 11th, 2008 3 Comments »

About Strands

Strands is a life streaming service that helps users discover new things based on what their friends like and do, and allows them to see what’s hot among the people they care about.

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Kalong from Strands.com got a FrostWire T-Shirt

November 8th, 2008 1 Comment »

Thanks to Kalong from Strands.com for posting this video of her receiving the FrostWire T-Shirt and stickers.

Kalong from Strands.com wearing her new FrostWire T-Shirt

Also thanks to all the users that have posted pictures of their stickers and t-shirts on our Flickr Photo Album

About Strands.com

Strands is a life streaming service that helps users discover new things based on what their friends like and do, and allows them to see what’s hot among the people they care about.

From Wikipedia

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